CHAPTER 437: CHAPTER 268 THE DISMEMBERED NEIGHBOR, THE AMAZING CONJECTURE OF SUBSPACE_1

In the darkness, Dean slowly opened his eyes. Instinctively, he wanted to turn on the light, but the next moment, he froze.

This is... he thought, his eyes widening.

A slightly gray world emerged before him, rendered visible by the faint streetlights. It was as if he were wearing night-vision goggles, yet the visual effect was much clearer and more natural.

This is night vision!

Dean thought he was seeing things and rubbed his eyes, but everything in his field of vision remained unchanged. He quickly focused inward, wanting to see if the panel offered any explanation for this change. But the panel was in the same state as it had been in the instance world, showing no new information.

Suddenly, Dean remembered the new trait listed on the panel: Beast Body!

Beast Body: Your physique has reached the current structural limits of humanity. Continuing to upgrade will delve deeper into optimizing gene expression...

Could this be the effect of latent genes within his body being awakened?

A delightful surprise indeed!

Dean quickly got up and walked to the mirror in his room. Pressing close to it, he used the weak light filtering in from outside to check if there were any abnormalities in his eyes. In the animal kingdom, many creatures possess night vision, but their eyes often exhibit corresponding phenomena, like reflecting light or changes in their pupils and irises. If that were the case for him, it wouldn’t be good.

However, Dean soon breathed a sigh of relief. In the pitch-black environment, although his pupils were noticeably different from how they were during the day, there were no obvious anomalies like reflections. Others in such conditions wouldn’t be able to detect these subtle changes at all.

He moved to the window to look down at the silent, deserted street. As light sources entered his vision, Dean discovered that everything began to shift between normal and gray, allowing him to clearly see both illuminated areas and those untouched by light. Although his entire field of vision wasn’t as clear as in daylight, it was still quite extraordinary!

After savoring this peculiar change for a moment, Dean cracked a smile. He was becoming less and less human!

The night breeze blew gently. The starless night sky, now viewed by Dean in his high spirits, felt incredibly welcoming. He turned, intending to switch on the room light and also check if anyone had tried to contact him during the full day he had slept.

Suddenly, Dean’s footsteps halted. His nose twitched slightly, and a faint but distinct BIP-BOP-BIP-BOP sound, like electric crackling, echoed in his ears. Carried on the night breeze was the subtle scent of disinfectant and blood. Factoring in the wind direction, he automatically pinpointed its origin: the neighboring building. That unfamiliar electric crackling sound was also coming from there!

This piqued Dean’s curiosity. After a moment’s thought, he turned back, went to his bedside to dress, and gathered his ID, service pistol, cell phone, and other items. Exiting his house, he performed an assisted jump, soaring like a glider over the neighbor’s fence, which was over a meter high. Upon landing, he rolled to absorb the impact and silently slipped into the neighbor’s yard.

This was a habit from his past life. When Dean first rented this detached house, he had thoroughly familiarized himself with the community’s layout and the details of his neighbors, including the exact placement of their external surveillance cameras. This made it convenient for him when he occasionally felt an impulse to do things best kept unknown.

Dean effortlessly avoided the neighbor’s surveillance, following the increasingly strong odor. Using his bare hands to grip the brick wall of the house, he climbed to a second-floor window and peered inside.

It appeared to be a young girl’s bedroom. A small, orange night light illuminated a little desk situated directly in front of the window. A dark-haired girl, her side to the window, was oblivious to the prying eyes outside. Her fingers tapped constantly on a wireless device that resembled a typewriter, seemingly transmitting some specific information. This must be some special kind of radio transmitter, Dean thought.

Quite by chance, after his evolution, Dean’s ears had just picked up the specific frequency of radio waves transmitted by this special radio.

Behind the girl were a red plastic bucket and a mop. Next to the mop was a large pile of dark-colored bags. The strong smell of disinfectant emanated from the room’s still-damp floor and the red plastic bucket; clearly, the room had been cleaned shortly before Dean’s arrival. And the faint smell of blood came from those black plastic bags!

...

Outside the window, Dean narrowed his eyes. As a former Sweeper, he recognized this scene all too well! He’d run into a colleague!

If he remembered correctly, this house was supposed to be inhabited by a middle-aged overseas Chinese couple, originally from Hong Kong Island. They ran a successful char siu shop in Chinatown and lived a comfortable life. The couple were kind people; they had even welcomed Dean with snacks when he first moved in. The only shame was that the couple had no children.

Judging by the situation, it seemed things hadn’t ended well for this nice couple!

Dean’s gaze shifted from the black plastic bags to the girl, whose side was still to the window. Her face was obscured by long, dark hair, but judging from her visible hand and her attire, she didn’t seem very old. Crucially, Dean hadn’t seen her before.

After pondering for a bit, Dean chose not to alert the girl inside. He returned to the ground, left the neighbor’s yard, and, avoiding all surveillance cameras, made his way to a public phone booth. He dialed the emergency number, reporting that he had inadvertently discovered a murder.

After ending the call, Dean returned to his residence, changed back into his pajamas, tidied up, and waited for the police.

...

The panel’s notification had been accurate. He had spent several days in the instance world, but in the real world, only a few hours had passed—not even a full day. So, there were no missed calls on his cell phone.

Out of boredom, Dean began to experiment with his newly acquired Subspace. This thing was magical. It seemed to envelop his surroundings, separated by a layer of space, and could retrieve any item he desired from within its range. The sensation was quite miraculous. Whenever Dean wished to store something, it was as if an invisible bubble extended from a part of his body, engulfing the item it touched. And when he wanted to retrieve something, that invisible ’bubble’ would follow his will, expelling the item wherever he wished.

Of course, this range was limited to a one-meter radius around Dean. Furthermore, the bubble didn’t possess the cutting power of true spatial abilities. It could only store complete, independent, inanimate objects no larger than its capacity; living things, like potted plants, couldn’t be put inside. It seemed that any living being, whether animal or plant, was repelled by the Subspace.

Dean wasn’t disappointed; on the contrary, he was quite thrilled! This ability to store things remotely meant that his earlier fantasy of storing bullets and then propelling them out had a high chance of becoming reality. It also meant he had effectively gained an invisible protective shield. In times of crisis, this shield could ’swallow’ incoming bullets and other inanimate objects, even send them ricocheting back at his will!

When this thought struck him, Dean was almost shaking with excitement. If his conjecture proved true, he would be, to some extent, invincible!If it weren’t the middle of the night with the police on their way, he almost wouldn’t have been able to resist the urge to test it by taking a shot at himself!

..

Fortunately, the agonizing wait wasn’t long. About twelve or thirteen minutes after the emergency call, two police cars with flashing red and blue lights arrived outside Dean’s neighbor’s yard. Night shift patrol cars usually carried two officers, so four patrol officers had arrived. Obviously, they took Dean’s report of a homicide seriously, not treating it as a routine case, for which they would typically send only one car.

Dean stood behind his curtains, peeking through a gap to observe the situation outside. He was rather hoping something would go wrong. That way, he could pretend to have been woken by the commotion, grab his gun, join the fray, and seize the chance to fire a few rounds to test his hypothesis!

Under Dean’s watchful gaze, three male officers and one female officer, all fully armed, first observed the house. After confirming a faint light on the second floor, they split into two pairs and fanned out. The male and female pair rang the doorbell. The other two male officers, one holding a classic Remington M870 shotgun and the other a semi-automatic rifle, hid in a surveillance blind spot, just in case.

The arrival of the police was clearly unexpected for the girl inside the house. Her first reaction was to turn off the desk lamp in her room, seemingly trying to pretend the occupants were asleep. But this only heightened the four officers’ suspicions. After waiting a moment and seeing no movement from inside, they signaled each other.

Once his partners were clear, the officer with the shotgun aimed at the doorframe and fired.

With a loud BANG! a large hole was blasted through the wooden door’s lock.

The other three, coordinating smoothly, covered each other as they rushed in and headed straight for the second floor.

The next moment, a woman’s screams, police shouts, and warnings shattered the night’s calm...

Soon, a girl who appeared to be only fifteen or sixteen was escorted out of the house by the police. The expressions of the four officers were grim. The female officer, in particular, perhaps having a weaker constitution, couldn’t hold it together for long after coming out; she squatted by a street drain and began to vomit.

Obviously, Dean’s guess had been correct. His amiable neighbors, the couple, were most likely dead—and dismembered...

...

Something’s not quite right, Dean mused, stroking his chin, a hint of suspicion in his eyes. There hadn’t been a shootout, and the girl hadn’t resisted. The girl’s method of disposing of the bodies wasn’t particularly professional, yet she had calmly and clearly used a wireless telegraph to send information externally after dealing with them. This indicated she wasn’t as simple as she appeared.

Forget it! Dean shook his head. America was full of all sorts of people. It was best to mind his own business.

...

Since his time in the instance hadn’t taken long, Dean still had a full day of vacation left.

The next day, the air was slightly cool. Dean could no longer contain himself and prepared to drive to a suburban shooting range to thoroughly explore the wonders of his Subspace.

When he drove past his neighbor’s house, Dean noticed it had been cordoned off with police tape. Many neighbors had gathered, discussing what had happened the previous night. This was quite normal. This area was adjacent to Chinatown, and most residents were Chinese; gunfire incidents were rare here. The shotgun blast last night had been quite loud, so many onlookers and gossips had turned up early in the morning. When they discovered that the people involved were the couple who owned the well-regarded char siu shop, even more curious and concerned residents appeared. Many of these people were regular customers of the shop, and some had quite good relationships with the owners.

I hope these people don’t develop a lasting aversion to char siu after finding out the shop owners were chopped into pieces, Dean thought, shaking his head. He drove out of the street and accelerated towards the suburbs.

Compared to his neighbors’ fate, he was now more eager to find out if his Subspace could swallow bullets, or even missiles, becoming his own game-breaking defensive artifact!